So even if you use sand and not a liquid, and mash yellow and blue together, suddenly you start seeing green. Now, if you were to examine it closely, there would not suddenly be actual ‘green’ specks of sand. It’s still just yellow and blue specks.
So how come we don’t see just see yellow and blue specks? Why does it suddenly turn green?
Same thing with a liquid – why don’t we see splodges of yellow and blue swirled tightly, instead of the blue and yellow turning green? If I examined the liquid closely, would it have actually turned green? Or would it still be separate blue and yellow specks of dye?
In: Physics
What you’re calling “color” is actually light frequency, and our eyes do not see it. At least, not directly. Your eyes can detect three things: “red”, “green”, and “blue”.
You can only see frequencies that are “yellow” because they are similar enough to red and green that they get detected by your red and green sensors. When a “yellow” frequency comes in, it looks like a little bit of green and a little bit of red. That’s what your eyes see.
So if you had a little bit of a red frequency and a little bit of a green frequency, it would look exactly the same to your eyes as a yellow frequency, even though it’s physically a different thing. Your eyes can’t tell the difference.
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